Josh Ritter first came to many people's attention in Ireland through his inclusion in the remarkable 'for your machine' compilation album released last summer on Steve Fanagan's mangomusic label. The song, 'Potters Wheel', taken from his debut eponymous album was a gently hypnotic lament which stood out from the rest of the album, not least because of its tempo and Josh's accent. Simple and haunting, it was a brief and tantalising introduction to a singer-songwriter steeped in the musical traditions of America.
Josh Ritter is an observer, with a skill for depicting the stories behind people that others may dismiss. One such being the self-depreciating clerk in 'Hotel Song' (on his first album) who falls in love with a customer in room 39 only to see her lost to the highway, 'that long yellow line'. His new album, Golden Age of Radio has more of this storytelling, evoking 'the ghost of Patsy Cline/On the Grand Old Opry Show', name checking Townes Van Zandt and introducing characters which seem to have their sights on distant hills: 'face forward in the wind'. This wanderlust and feel for the highways and byways is something depicted by people such as Jack Kerouac in his book, 'On The Road', and early Bruce Springsteen.
Imbued with a sense of timelessness, many of Ritter's songs could have easily come out of an American town at any time over the last forty years. This makes it all the more startling when you come face to face with the articulate young man who wrote them. Although Ritter always sang to himself as a child and was captivated when he first heard the Beatles 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' aged twelve, he didn't go to his first gig until he was seventeen. It wasn't long before dreams of becoming a neuroscientist were abandoned as he switched courses to study American cultural history through folk music. This grounding in the music which documented huge changes in America during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries has given Ritter the confidence to see himself as part of a continuing folk tradition, in which collaboration is the key to progression.
Currently on tour in Ireland with Steve Fanagan and Martin Finke, Ritter is full of plans for the future: he is going to work on an ep with Finke when he returns to the US, do some more touring, then record again in the summer. Although he is currently unsure of which of several ways to go with the recording – 'I want a lot more quiet guitars, but electric, and I want to do a real rock album' – there's one thing for certain: it will be worth waiting for.
Caroline Hennessy
'Josh Ritter' and 'The Golden Age of Radio' are available in Road Records, Fade Street, Dublin.
